HAROLD Sunday 16 June 2019 7–9pm Barbican

LSO SEASON CONCERT ARTIST PORTRAIT: DANIIL TRIFONOV

Beethoven Overture: Egmont Shostakovich Concerto No 1 for Piano, Trumpet and Strings Interval Berlioz Harold in Italy *

Gianandrea Noseda conductor Daniil Trifonov piano

Philip Cobb trumpet

Antoine Tamestit viola *

IN ITALY

2 Welcome

Welcome

elcome to tonight’s LSO concert at the Barbican conducted by Gianandrea Noseda. Pianist Daniil

Trifonov makes the final appearance in his LSO Artist Portrait series of 2018/19, and passes on the torch to viola player Antoine Tamestit for next season’s LSO Artist Portrait, which will bring together some of the most beautiful and innovative music composed for viola, and showcase the full range of Antoine Tamestit’s artistry.

This evening’s concert begins with Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, followed by Shostakovich’s Concerto No 1 for Piano, Trumpet and Strings. The LSO is delighted to welcome LSO Principal Trumpet Philip Cobb to perform as soloist alongside Daniil Trifonov in this piece.

After the interval, Antoine Tamestit joins the Orchestra as viola soloist in Berlioz’s Harold in Italy, a work originally written for violin and viola virtuoso Niccolò Paganini. This four-movement symphony is inspired by a poem by Lord Byron, describing Childe Harold’s pilgrimage through Italy. This concert forms part of Berlioz 150, as we celebrate the composer’s life and music across 2019, marking 150 years since Berlioz’s death.

A very warm welcome to the retired LSO players who join us tonight for their annual reunion. It is always a pleasure to see LSO members from years gone by, and I am delighted that they have this opportunity to hear today’s Orchestra perform.

I hope that you enjoy the concert and that we will see you again soon. Later this month, the LSO performs Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen in a semi-staged production conducted by Sir Simon Rattle and directed by Peter Sellars.

Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Managing Director

16 June 2019

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY GROUP: WORKS IN PROGRESS

This month’s LSO Discovery Showcase, ‘One Night, One Thousand and One Stories’, featured pieces for electronics, live performance and video presented by Ife Olalusi and Ken Burnett, members of the LSO Digital Technology Group. We spoke to Ken and Ife about their inspirations and influences, and how they produced music for the concert.

‘TO BE SOMEONE ELSE IS A BATTLE’

LSO Jerwood Composer+ Amir Konjani discusses To Be Someone Else is a Battle at LSO St Luke’s, his first event of the 16-month LSO Jerwood Composer+ Scheme, sharing thoughts on art, artists and how he created his immersive installation.

Read these articles and more •  lso.co.uk/blog

BMW CLASSICS IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE

On 30 June, the LSO takes over Trafalgar Square as Sir Simon Rattle conducts a dance-inspired programme of music by Dvořák, Poulenc, Ravel and Bushra El-Turk. There will also be performances by young musicians from the LSO On Track scheme in East London and from the Guildhall School.

LSO AT THE BBC PROMS 2019

The LSO and a 300-strong choir perform Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast on Tuesday 20 August at the BBC Proms, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. The programme also includes Varèse’s Amériques and French composer Charles Koechlin’s Les bandar-log.

WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS

We are delighted to welcome Jelena Nehodova and friends who join us in the audience tonight.

Please ensure all phones are switched off. Photography and audio/video recording are not permitted during the performance.

Latest News On our Blog

3Tonight’s Concert

Tonight’s Concert In Brief

oethe’s Egmont is a play that mixes romance and political intrigue with an overarching fight

for freedom, and Beethoven’s Egmont Overture captures all the drive, heroism and exuberance of the story. The music enacts a struggle between fear and youthful ambition, culminating with a silence that represents Egmont’s execution, followed by a heady and rousing ‘Victory Symphony’.

Shostakovich’s early Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and String Orchestra is compact and brilliant. Composed around the time of his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and the inventive Op 34 Preludes for Piano, the concerto shows a flashier side to Shostakovich, written to be premiered by the composer himself and filled with cinematic twists and turns.

Inspired by Byron’s poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, in Harold in Italy Berlioz depicts the dreamy wanderings of Harold through the Italian countryside. The first movement depicts Harold in the midst of Italy’s mountain ranges. In the following movements, Harold encounters pilgrims, pifferari (wandering wind players) and a romantic serenade, before he comes across a fearsome gang of brigands.

Daniil Trifonov In Conversation

What do you listen to beyond classical music? Outside of classical, I would say one of the most interesting experiences for me is listening to King Crimson, especially the early albums from the 1970s, like In the Court of the Crimson King and Larks’ Tongues in Aspic. I really like their music, it’s very instrumental rock. My father used to be in a rock band too. He played keyboards in this underground band back in the 1980s when he was studying. I quite like the sound of the electric guitar, but the furthest I’ve ventured from the piano is an organ!

Scriabin’s ‘Poem of Ecstasy’ … That’s the piece which started my love for classical music. I was already playing the piano when I first heard it. Once I did, I had Scriabin fever! I think that for the next five years I played more than half of the piano music that Scriabin wrote.

What do you do in your downtime? I really enjoy hiking and walking. Especially in the mountains. I like to do long trips, say 10 to 30 kilometres in length. I was always interested in geography – I suppose that’s where it comes from. And in city planning – I enjoy exploring London on foot, that’s one of my favourite activities while here. I also sometimes do some light coding.

What advice would you give to an aspiring musician at the outset of their career? I would say that it’s good to explore, to go beyond just piano literature and understand that the piano does not exist in a vacuum. There are other arts and other musics. I think it’s very important to listen widely, to orchestral music and opera. Also to enjoy other art forms as well. Movies, literature, and of course painting – it all helps.

Read the full interview at lso.co.uk/blog

PROGRAMME CONTRIBUTORS

David Cairns won the biography category of the Whitbread Prize and the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction for his second volume biography on Berlioz: Servitude and Greatness.

Andrew Huth is a musician, writer and translator who writes extensively on French, Russian and Eastern European music.

Lindsay Kemp is a senior producer for BBC Radio 3, including programming lunchtime concerts at Wigmore Hall and LSO St Luke’s. He is also Artistic Advisor to York Early Music Festival, Artistic Director at Baroque at the Edge Festival and a regular contributor to Gramophone magazine.

Andrew Stewart is a freelance music journalist and writer. He is the author of The LSO at 90 and contributes to a wide variety of specialist classical music publications.

4 Programme Notes

or all that Beethoven claimed he had agreed to compose incidental music for the first Viennese

production of Goethe’s drama Egmont in 1810 ‘purely out of love for the poet’ (apparently he would have preferred to write music for Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, also in the repertory that season), it is not hard to see how much the story would have inspired him. Set in the 16th century, it has Count Egmont, governor of Spanish-ruled Flanders, falling in love with Clärchen and through her finding sympathy for an oppressed people. He tries to persuade Philip II to show leniency but ends up on the scaffold, convinced that his death will inspire a new fight for freedom.

For the composer of Fidelio this was a godsend, and Beethoven’s incidental score includes four entr’actes, a melodrama (ie speech over music) and a climactic ‘Victory Symphony’. Only the overture has remained in the repertory, however, though its dramatic drive and heroic exuberance make it a powerful enough encapsulation of the story in itself. Indeed, as in the dynamic overtures to Coriolan and Leonore, Beethoven here produced one of the earliest examples of the symphonic poem, one of the 19th century’s favourite forms.

The Egmont Overture starts with a slow introduction, contrasting a stern and fatalistic-sounding string motif with lyrical woodwind phrases which eventually lead the music into the main Allegro section. Egmont’s youthful impetuosity is perhaps represented here, though threatened by reminiscences of the opening string figure. After an emphatic statement backed up by trumpets and timpani, the music cuts off unexpectedly. If this brief silence is showing us Egmont’s death, there can be no doubt that it is a joyous uprising that subsequently whisks the overture to its heady conclusion, in the music of the Victory Symphony – enough to inspire anyone to cast off their chains. •

Ludwig van Beethoven Overture: Egmont Op 84 1810 / note by Lindsay Kemp

16 June 2019

BEETHOVEN 250Sir Simon Rattle conducts the LSO at the Barbican in the composer’s

250th anniversary year

Singing Day:  Christ on the Mount of Olives 22 September 2019 LSO St Luke’s

HALF SIX FIX Beethoven Symphony No 7 & Berg Seven Early Songs 15 January 2020

Beethoven Symphony No 7 & Berg Early Works 16 January 2020

Part of Beethoven 250 at the Barbican

Discovery Day 19 January 2020 Barbican & LSO St Luke’s

Christ on the Mount of Olives 19 January & 13 February 2020

HALF SIX FIX Beethoven Symphony No 9 12 February 2020

Beethoven Symphony No 9 16 February 2020

lso.co.uk/201920season

5Composer Profile

Ludwig van Beethoven in Profile 1770–1827 / by Andrew Stewart

eethoven showed early musical promise, yet reacted against his father’s attempts to train him as

a child prodigy. The boy pianist attracted the support of the Prince-Archbishop, who supported his studies with leading musicians at the Bonn court. By the early 1780s Beethoven had completed his first compositions, all of which were for keyboard. With the decline of his alcoholic father, Ludwig became the family breadwinner as a musician at court.

Encouraged by his employer, the Prince-Archbishop Maximilian Franz, Beethoven travelled to Vienna to study with Joseph Haydn. The younger composer fell out with his renowned mentor when the latter discovered he was secretly taking lessons from several other teachers. Although Maximilian Franz withdrew payments for Beethoven’s Viennese education, the talented musician had already attracted support from some of the city’s wealthiest arts patrons. His public performances in 1795 were well received, and he shrewdly negotiated a contract with Artaria & Co, the largest music publisher in Vienna. He was soon able to devote his time to composition and the performance of his own works.

In 1800 Beethoven began to complain bitterly of deafness, but despite suffering the distress and pain of tinnitus, chronic stomach ailments, liver problems and an embittered legal case for the guardianship of his nephew, Beethoven created a series of remarkable new works, including the Missa Solemnis and his late symphonies and piano sonatas. It is thought that around 10,000 people followed his funeral procession on 29 March 1827.

Certainly, his posthumous reputation developed to influence successive generations of composers and other artists inspired by the heroic aspects of Beethoven’s character and the profound humanity of his music. •

•  BEETHOVEN ON LSO LIVE

Few musicians have as deep an understanding of Beethoven’s music as Bernard Haitink. This concerto album couples the Piano Concerto No 2, featuring soloist Maria João Pires, with the Triple Concerto, played by Lars Vogt, Gordan Nikolitch and Tim Hugh.

Available at lsolive.co.uk

6 Programme Notes

1  Allegretto 2 Lento 3 Moderato 4  Allegro con brio

Daniil Trifonov piano

Philip Cobb trumpet

s a young man Shostakovich had ambitions to become a composer-pianist in the mould of

Rachmaninov or Prokofiev, and by his early twenties he had gained a notable position in Russia as a solo pianist. In 1927 he had even been one of the Russian competitors at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, though he achieved only an honourable mention.

His performing style was very individual. ‘Shostakovich emphasised the linear aspect of music and was very precise in all the details of performance,’ recalled a friend. ‘He used little rubato in his playing, and it lacked extreme dynamic contrasts. It was an ‘anti-sentimental’ approach to playing which showed incredible clarity of thought.’

Shostakovich wrote this concerto for himself to play, composing it soon after completing the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and the 24 Preludes for Piano, and gave the first performance with members

of the Leningrad Philharmonic conducted by Fritz Stiedry on 13 October 1933. Shostakovich twice recorded the work, and there is even a brief film clip of him playing the finale at a recklessly fast tempo.

For a decade Shostakovich had taken full advantage of the excitement and confusion that reigned in post-Revolutionary Russia, producing a vast body of work that ranged from the modernist brutalism of the Second and Third Symphonies to the biting satire of the opera The Nose, from light-hearted ballet scores to the deep seriousness of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.

The concerto is one of his most accessible and justly popular works from this period. Short and compact, it constantly teases the listener with half-quotations, parodies • and sudden changes of direction. Although it has moments of seriousness, they tend to be swept aside by the anarchic humour which was a speciality of the young Shostakovich. Influences of Ravel, Prokofiev, Gershwin and Stravinsky can be heard, but

equally important is Shostakovich’s own approach to music for stage and film.

One account suggests that Shostakovich’s initial idea was for a solo trumpet concerto. Whether there is any truth in this or not, the final result is by no means a double concerto for equally-matched soloists, for the piano is very much in the foreground all the time. The trumpet plays a major role, however, often a thoroughly subversive one, and achieves a kind of lunatic glory in the Rossini-meets-Mickey Mouse conclusion. •

Programme Note by Andrew Huth

PARODY

•  A distinctive feature of Shostakovich’s musical style is his use of quotation and parody. His entire compositional output, from the youthful First Symphony to his final work, the Viola Sonata, is peppered with musical quotations. These range from tongue-in-cheek references to popular tunes and allusions to his own works, to the recurring use of personal musical motifs, the most famous and recognisable of which is the ‘DSCH’ motif (D, E-flat, C, B), his musical signature.

16 June 2019

Dmitri Shostakovich Concerto No 1 in C minor for piano, trumpet and strings Op 35 1933

Interval – 20 minutes There are bars on all levels. Visit the Barbican Shop to see our range of Gifts and Accessories.

— The concerto constantly teases the listener with half-quotations,

parodies and sudden changes of direction. —

7Composer Profile

PRAVDA

•  Pravda is a Russian broadsheet newspaper which began publication in the Russian Empire in 1912. After the October Revolution of 1917 its offices were moved to Moscow, where it became an official publication of the Soviet Communist Party.Subscription to Pravda was mandatory for state run companies, the armed services and other organisations until 1989.

fter early piano lessons with his mother, Shostakovich enrolled at the Petrograd Conservatoire in

1919. He announced his Fifth Symphony of 1937 as ‘a Soviet artist’s practical creative reply to just criticism’. A year before its premiere he had drawn a stinging attack from the official Soviet mouthpiece Pravda •, in which Shostakovich’s initially successful opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was condemned for its ‘leftist bedlam’ and extreme modernism. With the Fifth Symphony came acclaim not only from the Russian audience, but also from musicians and critics overseas.

Shostakovich lived through the first months of the German siege of Leningrad, serving as a member of the auxiliary fire service. He completed his Seventh Symphony after his evacuation and dedicated the score to the city. A micro-filmed copy was despatched by way of Teheran and an American warship to the US, where it was broadcast by the NBC Symphony Orchestra and Toscanini. In 1943 Shostakovich completed his Eighth Symphony, its emotionally shattering music compared by one critic to Picasso’s Guernica.

In 1948 Shostakovich and other leading composers, Prokofiev among them, were forced by the Soviet cultural commissar, Andrey Zhdanov, to concede that their work represented ‘most strikingly the formalistic perversions and anti-democratic tendencies in music’, a crippling blow to Shostakovich’s artistic freedom that was healed only after the death of Stalin in 1953. Shostakovich answered his critics later that year with the Tenth Symphony, in which he portrays ‘human emotions and passions’, rather than the collective dogma of Communism. •

Dmitri Shostakovich in Profile 1906–75 / by Andrew Stewart Gianandrea Noseda Russian Roots at the Barbican

Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony 31 October 2019

Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony 3 & 28 November 2019

Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony 5 December 2019

Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony 30 January & 9 February 2020

Explore the 2019/20 season lso.co.uk/201920season

8 Programme Notes

1  Harold in the mountains. Scenes of   melancholy, happiness and joy:   Adagio – Allegro 2  March of pilgrims singing the evening   prayer: Allegretto 3 Abruzzian mountain-dweller’s   serenade to his mistress:   Allegro assai – Allegretto 4  Brigands’ Orgy. Reminiscences of    earlier scenes: Allegro frenetico

Antoine Tamestit viola

he differences between Berlioz’s music and that of his German contemporaries are much

more striking than the affinities. Except occasionally, when it recalls Weber or Beethoven, it doesn’t sound anything like them. Its separation of timbres and clarity of texture are far removed from the piano-suffused sonorities of Wagner and Schumann. Berlioz’s formal procedures, too, are different. His symphonic movements rarely follow Viennese sonata practice. Their roots in his French (or adopted French) forebears – Méhul, Spontini, Cherubini, Le Sueur – become clearer the more we get to know their work.

Yet his music – if not its sound or structure, then the ideals behind it, the ethos, the poetic assumptions – would be unthinkable

without Beethoven’s Fifth, Sixth and Ninth symphonies and Weber’s Der Freischütz. Berlioz’s discovery of Beethoven and Weber (paralleling his discovery of Shakespeare and Goethe) had a radical effect on the young musician brought up on a diet of French opera. A new world opened before him.

THE INFLUENCE OF BEETHOVEN

Beethoven, in particular, revealed the symphony as an undreamed of medium for personal drama: music, by means of the modern orchestra, was free to say what it liked how it liked, nothing in human experience or in nature was alien, and musical form was a living thing, no longer rule-bound and pre-ordained but created afresh in response to the needs of the work in question. From now on Berlioz looked to Germany as the sacred homeland of music. Nothing in his career pleased him more than to be received by German musicians as one of them, and to feel that, in return for what he had received, he was giving them something back – a process that began with Liszt being influenced by the Symphonie fantastique (and making a piano reduction of it), and that continued, through Wagner and the profound effect on him of the Romeo and Juliet symphony, at least as far as Mahler.

The influence of Beethoven, however, could only be general, not specific. It was a matter of inspiration, not of imitation. So, though Berlioz is deeply concerned with issues of musical architecture, he works out his own salvation. Though he will learn from Beethoven’s technique of thematic transformation, he will not use him as a model. The Berliozian dramatic symphony comes out of Beethoven but doesn’t copy him. And there is, each time, a fresh approach. Harold in Italy, his second such work, has movement titles, like the Symphonie fantastique, but no written programme. And though, as with the Symphonie fantastique, there is a recurring melody, it is used in a quite different way.

THE BYRON CONNECTION

How close is the Byronic connection assumed by the title of the work? Identification with the author of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was common among the French Romantics. Yet the title which Berlioz chose for the symphony, composed after his return from his year in Italy as winner of the Prix de Rome, was more than just a gesture to fashion. It reflected a preoccupation that permeated his experience of Italy. That experience began under the auspices of Byron, with

an encounter with a Venetian sea-captain who claimed to have commanded the poet’s corvette on his journeys through the Adriatic and the Greek islands. In the months that followed, Berlioz’s imagination would often give a Byronic slant to what he did or thought. During the dog days in Rome, to escape the unbearable heat, he liked to go to St Peter’s, taking with him a volume of Byron, and, ‘settling myself comfortably in a confessional, enjoy the cool of the cathedral in a religious silence unbroken by any sound but the murmur of the two fountains in the square outside, wafting in as the wind stirred momentarily. I would sit there absorbed in that burning verse … I adored the extraordinary nature of the man, at once ruthless and of extreme tenderness, generous-hearted and without pity’.

PAGANINI’S COMMISSION

Harold originated in a request from Paganini, the legendary violinist and violist, for a piece featuring the Stradivari viola he had recently acquired. But when the first idea had been abandoned and replaced by a symphonic work inspired by Berlioz’s wanderings in the foothills of the Abruzzi, the solo viola, cast in a less soloistic role, became (in Berlioz’s words) ‘a kind of melancholy dreamer in the style of Byron’s Childe Harold’ – an

Hector Berlioz Harold in Italy Op 16 1834 / note by David Cairns

16 June 2019

9Programme Notes

observer standing apart. The ‘Harold’ theme preserves its identity unchanged throughout (in this it differs from the idée fixe in the Symphonie fantastique). At the same time, it is through the consciousness of this observer that the scenes of Italian nature and life are presented: the theme, as well as recurring constantly, is the source from which much of the work’s thematic material is derived. The different sections are linked, not merely at the surface level of a ‘motto’ theme but organically.

FIRST MOVEMENT: HAROLD IN THE MOUNTAINS

The first movement opens with a darkly chromatic fugato, beginning on cellos and basses, with a plaintive bassoon and oboe counter-subject. Woodwind add a melancholy tune which will be revealed as a minor-key version of the ‘Harold’ theme. The music rises to a grand, cloudy fortissimo, after which the fugato resumes. It culminates in a flourish, whereupon the texture clears, G minor becomes G major with the effect of sudden sunshine breaking through, and harp arpeggios introduce the soloist. The viola’s statement of the main theme – an open-hearted melody with a touch of melancholy – runs to some 30 bars. The theme is then restated in slightly

shorter form and in canon, richly scored. This leads to the Allegro, in 6/8 time and with an easy, swinging gait (speed is reserved for the coda). The sprightly second theme only feints at the orthodox dominant key; and, once the exposition of the musical material has run its course, the formal elements (development, recapitulation, coda) are merged in a continuous process in which the cross-rhythms and metrical superimpositions that are a feature of the work are prominently displayed.

SECOND MOVEMENT: PILGRIMS’ MARCH

The Pilgrims’ March moves in a single arc (extremely quiet to loud and then back to extremely quiet again) which contains three musically developed ideas: the procession’s approach across the stretched-out evening landscape and its disappearance into the dusk, the gradual change from day to night, and the curve of feeling in the solitary observer of the scene, from contentment to angst and isolation. The musical materials are a broad E major theme repeated many times in differing forms, variously harmonised, above a trudging bass; two bell-like sonorities which recur constantly (a tolling C natural on horns and harp and a thinner, brighter sounding B on flute,

oboe and harp); a fragment of chorale for woodwind alternating with muted strings; and the comments of the solo viola, first with the ‘Harold’ theme, then as a series of arpeggios played on the bridge of the instrument. In a long final diminuendo the bell notes and the march theme (pizzicato strings) grow fainter and fainter till only the viola is left.

THIRD MOVEMENT: SERENADE

The idea for the third movement came from the pifferari, strolling wind players whom Berlioz encountered during his stay in Italy. A rapid tune on oboe and piccolo above a drone bass, accompanied by a persistent rhythm on the orchestral violas, gives way to an Allegretto half the speed, whose cor anglais melody is embellished by the other woodwind and then combined with the (thematically related) ‘Harold’ theme. The brief Allegro is then repeated, after which the music and tempos of the two sections are combined while, high above, the ‘Harold’ theme rings out on flute and harp.

FOURTH MOVEMENT: BRIGANDS’ ORGY

The finale begins with a brusque call to order, full of vigorous syncopations. Then the themes of the previous movements are reviewed in turn and rejected, after the manner of the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth, though for opposite reasons: Beethoven’s is to clear the way for a new element, the human voice, Berlioz’s to remove the soloist. Harold’s theme is the last to go, becoming gradually more indistinct before the gathering onslaught of the brigands. Rhythm, with the percussion unleashed, is now dominant, and brilliant orchestral colour. Towards the end the orchestral momentum is halted, and we hear in the distance (two violins and one cello offstage) an echo of the Pilgrims’ March. The solo viola is stirred to momentary response. Then its nostalgic comments merge once again in the tumult of the orchestra, and the orgy resumes and carries the movement con fuoco (‘with fire’) to its headlong conclusion. •

10 Artist Biographies 16 June 2019

BERLIOZ SOCIETY

•  Join the Berlioz Society for more about music’s great original. The Society promotes the music, writings and life of the composer, with activities including an annual Study Weekend in London in November, regular meetings, and the publication three times a year of a Bulletin including essays, articles and reviews, all for an annual membership fee of £30. David Cairns CBE, renowned author and expert on the composer, is the Society’s Chairman.

For further information contact the Society’s Membership Secretary Peter Payne at ppchiral@mac.com or visit theberliozsociety.org.uk

Hector Berlioz in Profile 1803–69 / profile by David Cairns

ector Berlioz was born in south-east France in 1803, the son of a doctor. At the age of 17 he was sent

to Paris to study medicine, but had already conceived the ambition to be a musician and soon became a pupil of the composer Jean-François Le Sueur.

Within two years he had composed the Messe solennelle, successfully performed in 1825. In 1826 he entered the Paris Conservatoire, winning the Prix de Rome four years later. Gluck and Spontini were important influences on the formation of his musical style, but it was his discovery of Beethoven at the Conservatoire concerts, inaugurated in 1828, that was the decisive

event in his apprenticeship, turning his art in a new direction: the dramatic concert work, incarnating a ‘poetic idea’ that is ‘everywhere present’, but subservient to musical logic.

His first large-scale orchestral work, the autobiographical Symphonie fantastique, followed in 1830. After a year in Italy he returned to Paris and began what he later called his ‘Thirty Years War against the routineers, the professors and the deaf’. The 1830s and early 1840s saw a series of major works, including Harold in Italy (1834), Benvenuto Cellini (1836), the Grande Messe des Morts (1837), the Shakespearean dramatic symphony Romeo and Juliet (1839), the Symphonie funèbre et triomphale (1840) and Les nuits d’été (c 1841). Some were well-received; but he soon discovered that he could not rely on his music to earn him a living. He became a prolific and influential critic – a heavy burden for a composer but one that he could not throw off.

In the 1840s he took his music abroad and established a reputation as one of the leading composers and conductors of the day. He was celebrated in Germany (where Liszt championed him), in Russia (where receipts from his concerts paid off the debt from the Parisian failure of The Damnation

of Faust), in Vienna, Prague, Budapest and London. These years of travel produced less music. In 1849 he composed the Te Deum, which had to wait six years to be performed. But the unexpected success of L’enfance du Christ in Paris in 1854 encouraged him to embark on a project long resisted: the composition of an epic opera on The Aeneid which would assuage a lifelong passion and pay homage to two great idols, Virgil and Shakespeare.

Although Béatrice et Bénédict (1860–62) came later, the opera The Trojans (1856–58) was the culmination of his career. It was also the cause of his final disillusionment and the reason, together with the onset of ill-health, why he wrote nothing of consequence in the remaining six years of his life. The work was cut in two, and only part performed in 1863, in a theatre too small and poorly equipped. Berlioz died in 1869. •

11Artist Biographies

Gianandrea Noseda conductor

ianandrea Noseda is one of the world’s most sought-after conductors, equally recognised

for his artistry in both the concert hall and opera house. He was named the National Symphony Orchestra’s seventh Music Director in January 2016 and at the start of his second season with the NSO his contract was extended for four more years, through to the 2024/25 season.

In addition to his position with the NSO, Noseda also serves as Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Principal Conductor of the Orquestra de Cadaqués, and Artistic Director of the Stresa Festival in Italy. In July 2018, the Zurich Opera House appointed him the next General Music Director beginning in the 2021/22 season, where the centrepiece of his tenure will be a new Ring Cycle directed by Andreas Homoki, the opera house’s artistic director.

Nurturing the next generation of artists is important to Noseda, shown by his ongoing work with youth orchestras, including the European Union Youth Orchestra, and his recent appointment as music director of the newly-created Tsinandali Festival and Pan-Caucasian Youth Orchestra in Georgia.

Noseda has conducted the Berlin Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, NHK Symphony, Orchestre National de France, Philadelphia Orchestra, Vienna Symphony, and at leading opera houses and festivals such as Zurich Opera House, La Scala and the Salzburg Festival. From 2007 until 2018, Noseda was Music Director of Italy’s Teatro Regio Torino, ushering in an era of unmatched international acclaim for its productions, tours, recordings, and film projects.

Gianandrea Noseda also has a cherished relationship with the Metropolitan Opera. He returned to the Met on New Year’s Eve 2018 to lead performances of Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur featuring Anna Netrebko. In recent years, he has conducted Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, which received its premiere at the New Year’s Eve Gala in 2016, and a new production of Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles in 2015.

He has also played a significant role working with the BBC Philharmonic, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, which appointed him its first foreign Principal Guest Conductor in 1997. He was Principal Guest

Conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic from 1999 to 2003 and Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI from 2003 to 2006.

Noseda’s recording catalogue numbers more than 60 CDs, many of which have been celebrated by critics and received awards. His Musica Italiana project, which he initiated more than ten years ago, has chronicled under-appreciated Italian repertoire of the 20th century and brought to light unheard masterpieces. Conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orchestra Teatro Regio Torino, he has also recorded opera albums with celebrated vocalists such as Ildebrando d’Arcangelo, Rolando Villazon, Anna Netrebko and Diana Damrau.

A native of Milan, Noseda is Commendatore al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, marking his contribution to the artistic life of Italy. In 2015, he was honoured as Musical America’s Conductor of the Year, and was named the 2016 International Opera Awards Conductor of the Year. In December 2016 he was privileged to conduct the Nobel Prize Concert in Stockholm. •

12 Artist Biographies 16 June 2019

Daniil Trifonov piano

aniil Trifonov, winner of Gramophone’s 2016 Artist of the Year Award, has made a rapid

ascent as a solo artist, chamber musician and composer. Combining consummate technique with a rare sensitivity and depth, his performances are recognised for their profound musical insight and expressive intensity. Trifonov recently added a Grammy Award to his already considerable string of honours, winning Best Instrumental Solo Album of 2018 with Transcendental, a double album of Liszt’s works which marks his third title as a Deutsche Grammophon artist.

In September 2018, Trifonov launched the New York Philharmonic’s 2018/19 season, playing Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the opening night gala under incoming Music Director Jaap van Zweden before rejoining the Orchestra the following night for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 5. Trifonov performed the same concerto as part of his residency at Vienna’s Musikverein, which also included the Austrian premiere of his own Piano Concerto.

During a multi-faceted, season-long residency with the Berlin Philharmonic, Trifonov also plays Scriabin’s F-sharp minor Piano Concerto under Andris Nelsons. Other orchestral highlights included a return to Carnegie Hall for Schumann’s Piano Concerto

with the Met Orchestra and Valery Gergiev, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 3 with Marin Alsop and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 3 with Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony. Trifonov also releases his new Deutsche Grammophon recording Destination Rachmaninov: Departure, on which he performs the Russian composer’s Second and Fourth Piano Concertos, again with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, partners on his 2015 disc Rachmaninov: Variations.

In recital this season, Trifonov also plays Beethoven, Schumann and Prokofiev in New York and Berlin, where his Berlin Philharmonic residency features multiple solo and chamber concerts. These include performances of his own Piano Quintet, of which he also gives the Cincinnati premiere with the Ariel Quartet and a duo recital with his frequent partner Matthias Goerne.

Last season, Trifonov released Chopin Evocations, his fourth album for Deutsche Grammophon, which pairs works by Chopin with those of the 20th-century composers he influenced. Trifonov performed a similar programme throughout the US, Europe and Asia, including at the Philharmonie de Paris, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Carnegie Hall,

and Wigmore Hall. At Carnegie Hall, Trifonov curated his season-long Perspectives series, which included a performance of his own Piano Concerto with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra, as well as a similar series at the Vienna Konzerthaus and a concert with the San Francisco Symphony.

Born in Nizhny Novgorod in 1991, Trifonov began his musical training at the age of five, and went on to attend Moscow’s Gnessin School of Music as a student of Tatiana Zelikman, before pursuing his piano studies with Sergei Babayan at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He has also studied composition, and continues to write for piano, chamber ensemble and orchestra. When he premiered his own Piano Concerto in 2013, the Cleveland Plain Dealer commented, ‘Even having seen it, one cannot quite believe it. Such is the artistry of pianist-composer Daniil Trifonov.’ •

13Artist Biographies

hilip is a fourth generation Salvationist and comes from a family that is intrinsically linked

with Salvation Army music-making at its highest level. From a young age, Philip regularly featured as a cornet soloist, appearing alongside his brother Matthew and father Stephen, accompanied by his mother Elaine. However, in subsequent years he found himself making more regular appearances as a soloist in his own right.

In 2000 he gained a place in the National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain, where he became Principal Cornet on a number of courses and won the prestigious Harry Mortimer award on four occasions. As a student at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, Philip studied with Paul Beniston (Principal Trumpet of the London Philharmonic Orchestra) and world-renowned trumpet soloist Alison Balsom. In 2006 he took part in the prestigious Maurice André International Trumpet Competition and was awarded one of the major prizes in the competition as the Most Promising Performer. While studying, Philip played in The Salvation Army’s International Staff Band and also released his debut solo CD, Life Abundant, in 2007, accompanied by the Cory Band and organist Ben Horden. The following year he was

awarded the Candide Award at the London Symphony Orchestra’s Brass Academy and also played with the European Youth Orchestra as Principal Trumpet.

Prior to leaving the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Philip was already working with orchestras such as the London Philharmonic, London Chamber and BBC Symphony orchestras and by the time he had completed his Bachelor of Music degree he had already secured his current post in the London Symphony Orchestra. Philip has also played guest principal at the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Despite his heavy schedule with the LSO, Philip maintains his solo career and his interest in brass bands, having released his second solo CD Songs from the Heart accompanied by the International Staff Band.

He is also actively involved with the Superbrass, Eminence Brass and Barbican Brass ensembles. One of his other passions is film music and he enjoys the opportunity of pursuing this area of music-making with the LSO and also as a freelance trumpet player. Recent soundtracks on which Philip can be heard include: a number of the Harry Potter films, Twilight: New Moon, The Pirates, Shrek, A Better Life, Rise of the Guardians and Monuments Men.

He also appeared as a soloist in the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games. •

Philip Cobb trumpet

14 Artist Biographies 16 June 2019

ntoine Tamestit is recognised internationally as one of the great violists – as soloist, recitalist and

chamber musician. He has been described as possessing ‘a flawless technique, and combines effortless musicality with an easy communicative power’ (Bachtrack), and he is known for the depth and beauty of his sound.

In the 2018/19 season, Tamestit is Artist-in-Residence at SWR Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart with whom he has performed concertos by Schnittke, Walton and Hoffmeister. He has also play-directed the Orchestra in a programme of Bach, Hindemith, Britten and Brahms. With Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique he has toured the US and will appear as Gardiner’s soloist with the Orchestra of Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. He also performs with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, Dresden Staatskapelle, Orchestre de Paris in Paris and on tour, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra. In recital, he has appeared at the Berlin Philharmonie, Wigmore Hall, Vienna Konzerthaus, Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels and the Prinzregententheater in Munich.

Since giving the world premiere performance of Jörg Widmann’s Viola Concerto in 2015 with the Orchestre de Paris, Tamestit has also performed it with co-commissioners the Swedish Radio Symphony and Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony, and the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Tamestit has also appeared as soloist with orchestras such as the Czech Philharmonic, Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich, WDR Köln, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, and the Philharmonia. He has worked with such conductors as François-Xavier Roth, Riccardo Muti, Marek Janowski, Antonio Pappano, Valery Gergiev and Franz Welser-Möst.

Antoine Tamestit is a founding member of Trio Zimmermann with Frank Peter Zimmermann and Christian Poltera. Together they have recorded acclaimed CDs for BIS Records and played in Europe’s most famous concert halls. Other chamber music partners include Nicholas Angelich, Martin Fröst, Leonidas Kavakos, Nikolai Lugansky, Emmanuel Pahud, Francesco Piemontesi, Christian Tetzlaff, Cédric Tiberghien, Yuja Wang, and the Ebene and Hagen quartets.

Antoine Tamestit records for Harmonia Mundi, and his recording of the Widmann Concerto with Daniel Harding in 2018 was selected as Editor’s Choice in BBC Music Magazine. His first recording on Harmonia Mundi was Bel Canto: The Voice of the Viola, with Cédric Tiberghien, released in February 2017. For Naïve he has recorded three Bach Suites and works by Hindemith with Paavo Järvi. In 2016 he appeared with the Chamber Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra on a new recording of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante ( on Hännsler Classic).

Tamestit’s other world premiere performances and recordings include Thierry Escaich’s La Nuit Des Chants in 2018 and the Concerto for Two Violas by Bruno Mantovani. Works composed for Tamestit also include Neuwirth’s Weariness Heals Wounds and Gérard Tamestit’s Sakura. Together with Nobuko Imai, Antoine Tamestit is co-artistic director of the Viola Space Festival in Japan.

Born in Paris, Antoine Tamestit studied with Jean Sulem, Jesse Levine, and with Tabea Zimmermann. He was the recipient of first prize at the ARD International Music Competition, the William Primrose Competition, the Credit Suisse Young Artist Award in 2008 and was a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist. •

Antoine Tamestit viola

Jörg Widmann Viola Concerto with Daniel Harding 19 April 2020

Berio Voci with François-Xavier Roth 11 June 2020

Walton Viola Concerto  with Alan Gilbert 14 June 2020

BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concerts: Antoine Tamestit & Friends 8 & 15 May; 5 & 26 June 2020, LSO St Luke’s

LSO Artist Portrait in 2019/20

Explore the new season at lso.co.uk/201920season

TAMESTITANTOINE

16 The Orchestra

London Symphony Orchestra on stage tonight

Editor Fiona Dinsdale | fiona.dinsdale@lso.co.uk Editorial Photography Ranald Mackechnie, Chris Wahlberg, Harald Hoffmann, Marco Borggreve Print Cantate 020 3651 1690 Advertising Cabbells Ltd 020 3603 7937

Details in this publication were correct at time of going to press.

Guest Leader José Blumenschein

First Violins Clare Duckworth Emily Nebel Ginette Decuyper Laura Dixon Gerald Gregory William Melvin Laurent Quenelle Harriet Rayfield Colin Renwick Sylvain Vasseur Rhys Watkins Marciana Buta Hilary Jane Parker Lyrit Milrim Erzsebet Racz

Second Violins Julián Gil Rodríguez Thomas Norris Sarah Quinn Miya Väisänen Matthew Gardner Naoko Keatley Alix Lagasse Csilla Pogany Andrew Pollock Paul Robson Dmitry Khakhamov Grace Lee Hazel Mulligan Greta Mutlu

Violas Edward Vanderspar Malcolm Johnston German Clavijo Stephen Doman Robert Turner Heather Wallington Michelle Bruil Luca Casciato May Dolan Philip Hall Cynthia Perrin Alistair Scahill

Cellos Tim Hugh Alastair Blayden Jennifer Brown Noel Bradshaw Daniel Gardner Hilary Jones Anna Beryl Morwenna Del Mar Leo Melvin Joel Siepmann

Double Basses Nikita Naumov Colin Paris Patrick Laurence Matthew Gibson Thomas Goodman Joe Melvin José Moreira Josie Ellis

Flutes Gareth Davies Patricia Moynihan

Oboes Juliana Koch Max Spiers

Cor Anglais Christine Pendrill

Clarinets Andrew Marriner Chi-Yu Mo

Bassoons Daniel Jemison Christopher Gunia Susan Frankel

Contra Bassoon Dominic Morgan

Horns Timothy Jones Angela Barnes Alexander Edmundson Jonathan Lipton

Trumpets Philip Cobb David Carstairs Niall Keatley Gerald Ruddock

Trombones Isobel Daws James Maynard

Bass Trombone Paul Milner

Tuba Sam Elliot

Timpani Nigel Thomas

Percussion Neil Percy David Jackson Sam Walton

Harp Bryn Lewis

16 June 2019

LSO String Experience Scheme Since 1992, the LSO String Experience Scheme has enabled string players at the start of their professional careers to gain work experience by playing in rehearsals and concerts with the LSO. The musicians are treated as professional ‘extra’ players (additional to LSO members) and receive fees for their work in line with LSO section players. The Scheme is supported by: The Polonsky Foundation Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust Derek Hill Foundation Lord and Lady Lurgan Trust Angus Allnatt Charitable Foundation Rod Stafford

Performing tonight are: Harriet Haynes (violin), Tamaki Sugimoto (cello), Kai Kim (double bass)